For Lack of a Catastrophe
by Eevee
Summary: Dreams are things best left behind in your youth, and she's not getting any younger. Noriko/Tohma.


**For Lack of a Catastrophe**

"I could never have married you, Noriko-san, you know that as well as I do," that is what he tells her when the whole thing starts, and he is right, of course. She's not stupid, and feels vaguely affronted at this lack of trust in her judgements. She tells him that, too. Tells him that "Tohma-kun, I'm not an idiot. I always knew that," even if there are times when she wants to disagree with her better knowledge, just a little.

The thing is that neither of them would want to give up on their success for something as mundane as love, or marriage and family. Nittle Grasper can never survive an internal love affair, be it public or not, and Ryu-chan is everything the two of them could ever ask for. Realism is rarely a quality posessed by those who dream of stardom, and Noriko is no exception. She is young and the world wants their music, and she thinks that she is clever, cynical and mature, when she decides that her name should outlive her. Together, the three of them are unlike anything the world has ever seen, and it's not just because of the throphies lining the walls of NG-Records' offices. (_As the years pass by, she realize that realism is not always what it seems, and that it must be some latent stupidity that makes her do this - that, or poor Shuichi-kun is a worse influence than she thinks the first time she meets him._)

She knows that it never can be anything already the first time she sees Tohma looking at her without realizing that he is. She knows it as he pulls back the fingers that lingers on hers on the keyboard, knows it as time sees the lingering stop and Ryuichi wants to sing to the world, and not just Japan. It is a silly, pointless crush when she is twenty-two, and already then, she knows that when they find themselves married ten years later, it isn't to each other. Tohma Seguchi and Noriko Ukai were not meant to be without Ryuichi Sakuma, and that is why it unnervs her, just a little, how his hands feel when he pushes them up under her blouse. Her skirt is bunched up around her waist and his pants are pulled down to his knees to avoid stains that won't do on dry-clean only fabric, at least not for a man whose wife spends more time with her father than with her husband.

It's easy to laugh it away, and that is just what she does while she thinks that she is getting too old for this kind of affair, or at least this kind of wishful thinking. Noriko is one of the few people in this universe who knows Tohma Seguchi well enough to also know that he is not a man one would want to be involved with the way she sometimes finds that she almost is. Tohma is gentle as he unhooks her bra in order to fit his fingers up beneath the cups, soft-spoken and careful as in everything he does. Noriko is forceful and blunt, and the straps slide down her arms as she leans forward to kiss him. They share a dream when they are young and a passion for the rest of their lives, but Noriko does not have the patience required to love a man as twisted as her gentle friend. Far from incompatible, Nittle Grasper proves that much at least, but not for each other; not now.

So they both refrain from wishing for something they cannot have, and it becomes a slightly perverse affair that mostly takes place in his office, because that is who Tohma grows up to be. When Ryuichi leaves them again and Noriko finds the first gray hairs, they have little reason to make music together. Her daughter grows older, her husband is always older, and Tohma is Tohma, quiet, professional, and smiling politely to everybody but her and old pictures of Ryu-chan. Ryu-chan, who sends them postcards still and tells them how much fun he is having in Hollywood, and not once does he seem to wonder if they are as well as he is. Ryu-chan is much too busy to think about how Noriko and Tohma are nothing without him.

Somewhere along the way, they stop being rock stars and turn into responsible adults, and Noriko can't stand it.

Today, it is Fujisaki-kun of Bad Luck who lingers in the background in the interviews, who is credited in the serious music magazines. No longer Ryuichi's Tohma-kun, because Noriko-chan can see the shadows of cobweb wrinkles when she smiles, and it isn't Nittle Grasper her daughter's friends talk about. Nittle Grasper are classical, now, and Noriko stops living on dreams that long since passes by. (_It is a lonely resignation._)

She stiffens for a few seconds before letting herself fall against him - he isn't a large man, but she never thinks much about it because he still is firm and warm beneath her. One cannot use the word romance about sitting on his lap and wiping away his semen, but that sort of romance is a thing they both stop believing in before they turn twenty-six. Noriko's happily ever after pass away with Nittle Grasper, but Tohma-kun remains where Ryu-chan does not - he reaches under her blouse to fasten her bra and pulls the straps back onto her shoulders.

Noriko grins like she always does, when she is fifteen, twenty-five, now. "You know, you should have taken me when you still had the chance," that's what she says as she sits back on his desk, swinging her legs.

"I suppose you're right," Tohma tells her at that, straightening his tie as he pulls out a hair brush from a drawer. He smiles the way only she and Ryu-chan ever knows as he sits back in his chair, and Noriko knows that it is ridiculous to believe that anybody but Shuichi Shindou can warp the laws of the world these days. That doesn't stop her smile from softening just like Tohma's, or her better knowledge from thinking that it is unfair that he is the only thing left for her to dream of.


End file.
